Monday 18 February 2013

Moving on today to meet up with a work colleague at Las Negras, in the Parque Natural Cabo de Gata-Nijar. Our route is again along the coastal roads, stopping off at Adra for some supplies, and through the various towns and villages. Initially there were more acres of plastic but they ended past Adra and the scenery again became hilly dry and brown, with white-painted villages clinging to the hillsides.

The town of Puebla Vicar was very smart and seemed to have something of a roundabout-art fetish. Numerous junctions on the main road through the town all had different themes, sculptures, call them what you will, so here are a few piccies we managed to catch as we went along.

The town of Almeria, which we ploughed straight through the middle of, is the port for ferries to Melilla in Morocco and was obviously geared to that activity. We got a little mixed up in ferry traffic that had just arrived but no problems, just busy. Leaving the town, our route now took us off the main road into the Parque Natural, for a change satnav, netbook and the signposts all agreeing! As the name implies, there was no cultivation and few villages, just a rolling, sometimes mountainous countryside which eventually dropped down to the sea at Las Negras.

A small seaside village, the large campsite of El Nautico de la Caleta is situated about 1km along a narrow road in its own bay surrounded on the other three sides by steep-sided hills. The site was virtually empty so that we could pitch wherever we wanted – in theory. However almost all the pitches were covered, for shade in the summer, and we could not get the van underneath so rather than take up eight or ten bays by parking in the middle, we chose to pitch together with Tony in an open piece of land. We still had all the facilities available to us but we felt that this site could be restrictive to motorhomes larger than campervans during the full season. Nevertheless the English-speaking receptionist could not have been more friendly and helpful, so we booked in for 3 nights.

Later we had an acceptable, if not memorable, dinner at the restaurant overlooking the beach.